Thousands of patients' complaints about dentists

Patients' complaints about dentists are increasing. Growing criticism of patients at treating dentists.

11/23/2010

Independent Patient Counseling (UPD) receives innumerable complaints from German citizens complaining about the misconduct of their attending physician. It is by far the most complaints about dentists, while the behavior of family doctors was relatively little in the criticism.

The UDP has now examined the figures for the first half of 2010 as part of a study and published on Monday in Berlin. The figures show that so far this year, at least 40,000 people have visited one of the 22 nationwide UPD agencies. Every fifth of them had to make a specific complaint about a doctor, as the director of the UDP, Astrid Burkhardt, explained. Overall, most of the complaints were directed against hospitals and clinics, nursing care facilities and physicians with their own practice, Burkhardt said. However, the statutory health insurance were relatively often in the criticism, as can be seen from the UDP report.

Of the approximately 8,000 complaints received by the UDP on treating physicians, a good 30 percent were directed against dentists. Thus, the dentists are by far at the top of the complaints list, but are rarely possible treatment errors starting point of criticism, but suspected wrong accounting by the dentist. According to information from the UDP, general practitioners are much less criticized by dentists than dentists, despite the considerably higher number of patients. Only 17.5 percent of the complaints were directed against family doctors. The patients were very satisfied with the performance of paediatricians. Only 0.8 percent of the total complaints were pediatricians, which were by far the least among the listed groups of physicians.

Because patients have been paying more and more dental care out of pocket in recent years, the number of complaints about excessive bills has increased significantly at the same time, UDP's managing director said the growing dissatisfaction with dental treatment. In addition, Stefan Etgeton, health expert of the Federal Association of Consumer Advocates, stressed that „ the settlement of costs directly through the health insurance companies (...) a peace-building effect“ Has effect. The expert therefore warned against transferring the co-payment common in dental treatment to other medical areas, as was the case in the current health care reform.

Wolfgang Zöller, patient representative of the Federal Government, will shortly be dealing with the results of the current report by independent patient counseling. The federal government will evaluate the report of patient advice with a special look at the role of dentists, Zöller said in a statement on the current figures of the UDP. Subsequently, Zöller wants to present a proposal by the end of December in order to further strengthen the rights of patients in Germany. This could then be formulated after discussion and appropriate adjustment in 2011 as a bill and passed by the Federal Government. (Fp)

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Picture credits: by-sassi